961 
D77I 


UC-NI 


B    3    5SE 


14  DAY  USE 

I  RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 


>w,  or 
rail. 


6 


THEODORE  DREISER 

America's  Foremost  Novelist 


NEW    YORK:     JOHN    LANE    COMPANY 
LONDON:  JOHN  LANE,  THE  BODLEY  HEAD 


Photograph  by  Ira  L.  Hill's  Studio. 


LOAN  STACK 


THEODORE  DREISER 


THEODORE  DREISER— A 
PORTRAIT* 

By  EDGAR  LEE  MASTERS    -TN 

SOUL  enrapt  demi-urge, 
Walking  the  earth, 
Stalking  life. 

JACK  o'Lantern,  tall  shouldered, 
One  eye  set  higher  than  the  other, 

Mouth  cut  like  a  scallop  in  a  pie 

Aslant,  showing  powerful  teeth, 

Swaying  above  the  heads  of  others, 

Jubilant,  with  fixed  eyes  scarcely  sparkling, 

Moving  about  rhythmically,  exploding  with  laugh 
ter, 

Touching  fingers  together,  back  and  forth, 

Or  toying  with  a  handkerchief, 

And  the  eyes  burn  like  a  flame  at  the  end  of  a 
funnel, 

And  the  ruddy  face  glows  like  a  pumpkin 

On  Halloween! 

OR  else  a  gargoyle  of  bronze 
Turning  suddenly  to  life 
And  slipping  suddenly  down  corners  of  stone 
To  eat  you: 

Full  of  questions,  objections, 
Distinctions,  instances, 
Contemptuous,  ironical,  remote, 
Cloudy,  irreverent,  ferocious, 
Fearless,  grim,  compassionate  yet  hateful, 
Old  yet  young,  wise  yet  virginal, 
To  whom  everything  is  new  and  strange, 

*  Written  for  The  New   York  Times  Review  of  Books. 

3 


THEODORE  DREISER— A  PORTRAIT 

Whence  he  stares  and  wonders, 
Laughs,  mocks,  curses — 
Disordered,  yet  with  a  passion  for  order 
And  classification — hence  the  habitual 
Folding  into  squares  of  a  handkerchief. 

OR  else  a  well  cultivated  and  fruitful  valley, 
But  behind  it  unexplored  fastnesses. 
Gorges,  precipices,  and  heights 
Over  which  thunder  clouds  hang, 
From  which  lightning  falls, 
Stirring  up  terrible  shapes  of  prey 
That  slink  about  in  the  blackness. 
The  silence  of  him  is  terrifying 
As  if  you  sat  before  the  sphinx. 
The  look  of  his  eyes  makes  tubes  of  the  air 
Through  which  you  are  magnified  and  analyzed. 
He  needs  nothing  of  you  and  wants  nothing. 
He  is  alone  and  content, 
Self-mastered  and  beyond  friendship, 
You  could  not  hurt  him. 
If  he  would  allow  himself  to  have  a  friend 
He  could  part  with  that  friend  forever 
And  in  a  moment  be  lost  in  wonder 
Staring  at  a  carved  rooster  on  a  doorstep, 
Or  at  an  Italian  woman 
Giving  suck  to  a  child 
On  a  seat  in  Washington  Square. 

SOUL  enrapt  demi-urge, 
Walking  the  earth, 
Stalking  life. 


WHAT  MANNER  OF  MAN  HE  IS* 
By  HARRIS  MERTON  LYON 

IN  many  ways,  my  masters,  the  one 
man  writing  in  this  country  to-day 
that  is  worth  the  lot  of  them.  All  the 
good  magazine  fellows — and  they  are 
good  fellows,  the  Tarkingtons,  Beaches, 
Londons  and  the  rest — may  play  their 
little  lighthearted  game  and  fare  on  into 
the  dusk,  pleased  that  they  did  nothing 
and  did  it  well.  They  are  for  the  most 
part  dead  before  they  die,  and  so  no 
mystery.  But  here  is  a  fellow  who  now 
shows  as  if  he  may  never  die  at  all — 
whose  work  reveals  at  once  that  lucidity 
and  that  inscrutability  which  we  accord 
to  the  seer.  This  man  is  mysterious;  he 
is  interesting. 

Imagine  a  man,  long,  loosely  put  to 
gether,  with  design  obtuse,  blunted  or 
slack  where  in  most  individuals  nature 
makes  for  acuteness  and  tautness.  A 
lolling  gait;  a  lolling  head;  unbeauti- 
ful,  unarresting,  prematurely  grizzled. 
Somewhere  between  forty  and  fifty 
years  old  now,  I  take  it.  A  loose  mouth, 
chin  blunted  and  rather  small;  bluish 
grey  eyes,  large,  lolling  eyes,  perhaps 

*  From  "Reedy's  Mirror." 

5 


JMERICJ'S    FOREMOST   XOfELIST 

neurotic,  and  meaning  nothing,  save 
perhaps  in  anger.  Simply  a  tall,  un 
gainly,  unlovely  man  with  something  of 
the  cast  of  Oliver  Goldsmith's  features. 
Something  lumpish,  something  rankly 
vegetable  is  evoked.  What?  A  huge 
rutabaga;  a  colossal,  pith-stricken  rad 
ish.  In  this  body  dwells  this  interest 
ing,  this  amazingly  fascinating  mind. 
He  sits,  lolling  his  head,  articulating 
with  a  drone  .  .  .  "Well-ah  .  .  .  Well- 
ah"  .  .  .  folding  a  pocket  handkerchief 
eternally  into  a  strip,  folding  the  strip 
itself  together,  accordion-wise.  Theo 
dore  Dreiser,  mysterious  and  powerful. 

William  Marion  Reedy  once  said  to 
me,  when  the  musty  ale  was  flowing  free, 
'Thank  God,  Dreiser  hasn't  got  style. 
If  he  ever  gets  a  style,  it's  good-bye.'' 
You  know  what  he  meant:  If  Dreiser 
ever  gets  thinking  how  he  is  going  to  say 
a  thing  rather  than  what  he  is  going  to 
say  his  work  will  suffer  in  body  what  it 
gains  in  telling. 

But  Dreiser  will  never  get  this  sort  of 
style.  The  man's  mind  is  essentially 
simple;  it  is  so  simple  that  many  people 


AMERICA'S    FOREMOST    \OrELIST 

find  him  too  confoundedly  prosaic  and 
so  will  have  none  of  him.  For  years  he 
prepared  magazines  for  the  simple  peo 
ple;  and  he  seems  in  that  work  to  have 
convinced  himself  that  it  will  never  do 
to  take  it  for  granted  that  the  mob  is 
already  apprised  of  a  fact.  Once,  rid 
ing  in  the  subway,  he  opened  a  copy  of 
the  Evening  W^rld  and  showed  me  the 
line:  "'Let  us  introduce  you  to  the  work 
of  Rudyard  Kipling/'  I  scoffed,  saying 
people  already  knew  that  work.  Dreiser 
said,  "Xo,  they  don't;  they  have  to  be 
introduced  to  even-thing."  To  believe 
that,  and  yet  to  write  novels,  requires 
infinite  patience.  It  also  lays  the  ghost 
of  "style";  for  perhaps  one-half  of  style 
is  repression.  The  stylist  is  the  man 
who  withholds  his  pen. 

Dreiser  has  tried  to  give  himself  an 
impassive  attitude  of  mind.  His  idea  is 
that  a  writer  should  look  down  on  life 
much  as  a  god  does,  neither  in  irony  nor 
in  awe;  should  regard  men  and  women 
as  blades  of  grass,  flourishing  and  perish 
ing  under  the  eternal  sky.  For  such  a 
god,  for  such  a  writer  we  may  concoct  a 

7 


AMERICA'S   FOREMOST   NOVELIST 

paradox:  everything  is  really  so  unim 
portant  that  it  might  well  be  treated  as 
important.  Thus  Dreiser.  Lest  a  plate 
glass  window  or  an  apartment  house 
perish  forever  from  men's  minds,  he  will 
set  it  down  in  detail.  I  do  not  see  how 
he  ever  gets  done  with  a  book.  Every 
hour  in  every  day  is  so  important  to 
every  character  that  Dreiser  himself 
must  feel  rather  like  a  clock  with  a  con 
science. 

Yet  patience  alone  does  not  explain 
Dreiser.  If  you  ask  anyone  who  knows 
the  man  personally,  he  will  say  he  can 
not  tie  Dreiser  up  with  his  books  at  all. 
That  part  of  the  writer  which  sees  hu 
man  character  in  a  flash  and  builds  it 
up  into  an  enduring  monument  is  hidden. 
Dreiser  in  the  flesh  seems  too  peevish 
and  fretful.  That  he  isn't  we  know  from 
Carrie  and  Jennie  and  Hurstwood  and 
Coivperivood.  Here  is  nothing  but 
broad  sympathy,  genuine  sweetness  of 
heart,  sublime  and  thrilling  moments  of 
true  pity  that  sometimes  torture  the 
reader  into  tears.  What  does  this  recluse 

8 


AMERICA'S   FOREMOST   NOVELIST 

keep  from  us,  behind  those  lolling,  un 
initiated  eyes  of  his? 

That  he  keeps  poetry  is  one  thing  sure. 
I  sat  once  with  him  on  a  roof  in  Harlem 
and  watched  some  pigeons  flying.  He 
spoke  in  a  sort  of  rhapsody  of  their  grace 
and  their  mystery.  I  think  later  he 
wrote  a  bit  about  them;  I  know  he  in 
tended  at  that  time  a  book.  To  a  man 
who,  in  the  backward-running  holes  of 
his  mind,  keeps  caves  for  poetry  any  in- 
appropriateness  of  genius  is  creditable. 
We  read  of  Hurstwood  and  his  rocking 
chair  and  his  trips  to  the  butcher  with  a 
sort  of  sick  sense  of  the  realism  of  it  all. 
But  the  man  who  gave  us  Hurstwood  is 
a  poet  in  his  heart. 

I  think  perhaps  I  have  hit  the  mys 
tery  of  Dreiser  in  using  the  word  recluse. 
Not  that  he  is  a  recluse  socially.  I  mean 
mentally.  There  are  some  men,  like 
Chesterton,  who  wear  their  minds  on  the 
tips  of  their  tongues.  Dreiser  would  talk, 
and  talk  with  a  stumbling,  droning  con 
viction,  but  not  with  that  exultation  and 
precision  with  which  he  writes.  Dreiser 
was  the  first  man  who  taught  me  to  think. 


AMERICA'S   FOREMOST   NOVELIST 

He  would  pick  up  a  newspaper  with  an 
account  in  it  of  a  murder  trial  and  he 
would  make  some  comment  that  gave 
so  clear  and  arresting  a  judgment  on 
humanity  that  I,  the  neophyte,  used 
to  gasp.  But  it  would  soon  be  lost 
in  rambling,  petty  inconsequentialities. 
There  was  no  sustained  flow  to  Dreiser, 
as  for  instance  there  was  to  Henley  and 
to  Oscar  Wilde,  and,  in  this  day,  to 
Vance  Thompson.  Some  men  are  born 
to  keep  conversation  always  at  its  flower. 
But  not  so  Dreiser.  From  him,  too,  I 
learned  that  there  are  always  two,  and 
possibly  three  or  a  dozen  sides  to  every 
thing.  This  is  enough  to  make  anybody 
tongue-tied. 

Thus  I  should  say  the  mental  recluse 
in  Dreiser  is  partly  due  to  his  philoso 
phy.  And  I  think,  too,  to  a  certain 
morbidity  which  he  himself  had  admit 
ted.  His  early  life  was  both  interesting 
and  severe.  Once,  in  New  York,  he  had 
but  a  loaf  of  bread  left.  A  veritable 
staff  of  life.  While  he  was  applying  in 
an  office  for  employment,  an  officious 
porter  picked  up  the  loaf  in  the  ante- 

10 


AMERICA'S   FOREMOST   NOFELIST 

room  and  threw  it  into  the  dust  bin. 
God  could  do  him  no  viler  trick.  So 
from  then  on  his  fortunes  began  to  mend. 
But  the  experiences  through  which  he 
passed  left  this  new  and  tantalizing  nerv 
ousness  in  his  system.  I  think  this 
slight  morbidity  may  have  ramified  out 
into  delusions  of  animosities  in  the  world 
around  him;  whereas  the  animosities 
never  were  there  .  .  .  they  were  simply 
puzzled  incomprehensions  of  him.  Nat 
urally,  however,  a  man  thinking  thus 
would  keep  his  real  self  for  the  sanctity 
of  pen  and  paper.  His  social  self  he 
felt  was  best  kept  commonplace  to  a 
degree;  and  hence  the  casual  acquaint 
ance  of  Dreiser  cannot  reconcile  the  man 
to  his  books. 

Dreiser  is  important.  There  is  no 
American  writing  man  to-day  the  con 
dition  of  whose  health,  vigor  and  spirits 
is  more  important.  I  am  like  Reedy 
in  that  I  hope  he  will  never  accumulate 
a  "style." 

What  I  hope  from  him  is  that  Dreiser 
will  go  along  in  the  slow,  painstaking 
way  on  which  he  is  faring,  but  with  the 
n 


AMERICA'S   FOREMOST   NOVELIST 

four  fingers  of  his  good  right  hand  feel 
ing  sensitively  under  their  tips  whether 
a  sentence,  a  paragraph,  a  page  thrills 
and  jumps  with  life  or  whether  it  is  just 
cold  putty,  molded  and  dumped  there 
...  so  many  hundreds  of  words  et 
praeterea  nihil. 

He  sits,  rolling  in  his  chair,  rolling 
his  head,  rolling  his  tongue,  pleating  his 
handkerchief,  drinking  his  glass  of  water, 
droning  after  the  manner  of  Coleridge 
only  not  so  somnolent.  .  .  .  "Well-ah 
.  .  .well-ah  ..."  and  behind  those 
round,  uncommunicative  eyes  passes  the 
procession  of  the  characters  of  his  genius 
.  .  .  Drouet  with  his  shiny  shoes  and 
drummer  odor,  Jenny  Gerhardt's  old 
father  carrying  the  baby  to  the  Lutheran 
church  to  be  christened,  Goivperwood, 
who  got  everything  and  nothing,  Hurst- 
ivood  turning  on  the  gas  to  change  his 
problem  for  a  new  one.  .  .  . 

The  one  man,  my  masters,  worth  the 
lot  of  them. 


12 


TO   THEODORE   DREISER   ON 
READING  "THE  'GENIUS' " 

By  ARTHUR  DAVISON  FICKE 

THERE  were  gilded  Chinese  dragons 
And  tinkling  danglers  of  glass 
And  dirty  marble-topped  tables 
Around  us,  that  late  night-hour. 
You  ate  steadily  and  silently 
From  a  huge  bowl  of  chop-suey 
Of  repellant  aspect; 
While  I, —  I,  and  another, — 
Told  you  that  you  had  the  style  neither  of  William 

Morris 
Nor  of  Walter  Pater. 

And  it  was  perfectly  true   .   .   . 

But  you  continued  to  occupy  yourself 

With  your  quarts  of  chop-suey. 

And  somehow  you  reminded  me 

Of  nothing  so  much  as  of  the  knitting  women 

Who  implacably  counted  stitches  while  the  pride 

of  France 
Went  up  to  death. 

Tonight  I  am  alone, 

A  long  way  from  that  Chinese  restaurant, 
A  long  way  from  wherever  you  are. 
And  I  find  it  difficult  to  recall  to  my  memory 
The  image  of  your  large  laboring  inexpressive  face. 
For  I  have  just  turned  the  last  page 
Of  a  book  of  yours — 

A  book   large   and   superficially   inexpressive, — like 
yourself. 

*  From  "The  Little  Review" 
13 


AMERICA'S    FOREMOST   NOVELIST 

It  has  not,  any  more  than  the  old  ones, 

The  style  of  Pater. 

But  now  there  are  passing  before  me 

Interminable  figures  in  tangled  procession — 

Proud  or  cringing,  starved  with  desire,  or  icy, 

Hastening  toward  a  dream  of  triumph;  fleeing  from 

a  dream  of  doom, — 
Passing — passing — passing 
Through  a  world  of  shadows, 
Through  a  chaotic  and  meaningless  anarchy, 
Under  heavy  clouds  of  terrific  gloom 
Or   through   ravishing   flashes  of   knife-edged  sun 
light- 
Passing — passing — passing — 
Their  heads  haloed  with  immortal  illusion, — 
The  terrible  and  beautiful,  cruel  and  wonder-laden 
illusion  of  life. 


14 


A  CARICATURE  OF  THEODORE  DREISER 
DRAWN       BY       P.       B.       McCORD 


THE   WRITER   AND    HIS 
WRITINGS* 

By  JOHN  COWPER  POWYS 

IN  estimating  the  intrinsic  value  of  a 
book  like  The  "Genius"  and — gener 
ally — of     a    writer    like    Theodore 
Dreiser,  it  is  advisable  to  indulge  in  a 
little  gentle  introspection. 

Criticism  need  not  always  impose  it 
self  as  an  art;  but  it  must  at  least  con 
form  to  some  of  the  principles  that 
govern  that  form  of  human  activity. 
The  worthlessness  of  so  much  energetic 
modern  criticism  is  that  it  proceeds — 
like  scum — from  the  mere  surface  of  the 
writer's  intelligence.  It  is  true  that  all 
criticism  resolves  itself  ultimately  into 
a  matter  of  taste; — but  one  has  to  dis 
cover  what  one's  taste  really  is;  and  that 
is  not  always  easy. 

Taste  is  a  living  thing,  an  organic 
thing.  It  submits  to  the  laws  of  growth; 
and  its  growth  is  fostered  or  retarded  by 
many  extraneous  influences.  In  regard 
to  the  appreciation  of  new  and  original 
works  of  art,  it  belongs  to  the  inherent 
nature  of  taste  that  it  should  be  enlarged, 
transmuted,  and  undergo  the  birth-pangs 

*  From  "The  Little  Review" 

16 


"HE  WRITER  AND  HIS  WRITINGS 

f  a  species  of  re-creation.  In  the  pres- 
nce  of  a  work  of  art  that  is  really  un- 
sual;  in  an  attempt  to  appreciate  a 
iterary  effect  that  has  never  appeared 
icfore,  one's  taste  necessarily  suffers  a 
ertain  embarrassment  and  uneasiness, 
t  suffers  indeed  sometimes  a  quite  ex- 
reme  discomfort.  This  is  inevitable, 
"his  is  right.  This  means  that  the  cre- 
tive  energy  in  the  new  thing  is  getting 
3  work  upon  us,  unloosening  our  prej- 
idices  and  enlarging  our  scope.  Such 
.  process  is  attended  by  exquisite  intel- 
ectual  excitement.  It  is  also  attended 
>y  a  certain  rending  and  tearing  of  per- 
onal  vanity. 

In  dealing  with  a  creative  quality  as 
musual  and  striking  as  that  of  Theodore 
Dreiser,   it  is   of   absolutely  no   critical 
ralue  to  content  ourselves  with  a  crude 
>hysical   disturbance  on  the  surface  of 
>ur  minds,  whether  such  disturbance  is 
.avourable  or  unfavourable  to  the  writer, 
t   is,    for   instance,    quite    irrelevant   to 
url  condemnation  upon  a  work  like  The 
Genius"    because    if    is    largely    preoc- 
apied  with  sex.     It  is  quite  equally  ir- 


THE  WRITER  AND  HIS  WRITINGS 

relevant  to  lavish  enthusiastic  laudations 
upon  it  because  of  this  preoccupation.  A 
work  of  art  is  not  good  because  it  speaks 
daringly  and  openly  about  things  that 
shock  certain  minds.  It  is  not  bad  be 
cause  it  avoids  all  mention  of  such  things. 
An  artist  has  a  right  to  introduce  into 
his  work  what  he  pleases  and  to  exclude 
from  his  work  what  he  pleases.  The 
question  for  the  critic  is,  not  what  sub 
ject  has  he  selected,  but  how  has  he 
treated  that  subject; — has  he  made  out 
of  it  an  imaginative,  suggestive,  and  con 
vincing  work  of  art,  or  has  he  not! 

Dreiser  is  concerned  with  the  mass 
and  weight  of  the  stupendous  life-tide; 
the  life-tide  as  it  flows  forward,  through 
vast  panoramic  stretches  of  cosmic  scen 
ery.  Both  in  respect  to  human  beings, 
and  in  respect  to  his  treatment  of  inan 
imate  objects,  this  is  always  what  most 
dominatingly  interests  him.  You  will 
not  find  in  Dreiser's  books  those  fasci 
nating  arrests  of  the  onward-sweeping 
tide,  those  delicate  pauses  and  expec 
tancies,  in  back-waters  and  enclosed 
gardens,  where  persons,  with  diverting 

18 


THE  WRITER  AND  HIS  WRITINGS 

twists  in  their  brains,  murmur  and  mean 
der  at  their  ease,  protected  from  the  great 
stream.  Nobody  in  the  Dreiser-world 
is  so  protected;  nobody  is  so  privileged. 
The  great  stream  sweeps  them  all  for 
ward,  sweeps  them  all  away;  and  not 
they,  but  It,  must  be  regarded  as  the 
hero  of  the  tale. 

It  is  precisely  this  quality,  this  sub 
ordination  of  the  individual  to  the  deep 
waters  that  carry  him,  which  makes 
Dreiser  so  peculiarly  the  American 
writer.  Perhaps  this  is  one  of  the  rea 
sons  why  he  has  had  a  more  profoundly 
appreciative  hearing  in  England  than 
in  the  United  States.  It  was  so  with 
Walt  Whitman  in  his  earlier  days. 

The  true  literary  descendants  of  the 
author  of  the  Leaves  of  Grass  are  un 
doubtedly  Theodore  Dreiser  and  Edgar 
Masters.  These  two,  and  these  two 
alone,  though  in  completely  different 
ways,  possess  that  singular  "beyond-good- 
and-evil"  touch  which  the  epic  form  of 
art  requires.  It  was  just  the  same  with 
Homer  and  Virgil,  who  were  as  natu 
rally  the  epic  children  of  aristocratic 
ages,  as  these  are  of  a  democratic  one. 

19 


THE  WRITER  AND  HIS  WRITINGS 

And  so  with  the  style  of  the  thing.  It 
is  a  ridiculous  mis-statement  for  critics 
to  say  that  Dreiser  has  no  style.  It  is 
a  charming  irony,  on  his  own  part,  to 
belittle  his  style.  He  has,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  a  very  definite  and  a  very  effective 
style.  It  is  a  style  that  lends  itself  to  the 
huge  indifferent  piling  up  of  indiscrim 
inate  materials,  quite  as  admirably  as 
that  gracious  poetical  one  of  the  old  epic- 
makers  lent  itself  to  their  haughtier  and 
more  aristocratic  purpose.  One  would 
recognize  a  page  of  Dreiser's  writings 
as  infallibly  as  one  would  recognize  a 
page  of  Hardy's.  The  former  relaxes 
his  medium  to  the  extreme  limit  and  the 
latter  tightens  his;  but  they  both  have 
their  "manner."  A  paragraph  written 
by  Dreiser  would  never  be  mistaken  for 
anyone  else's.  If  for  no  other  peculiarity 
Dreiser's  style  is  remarkable  for  the 
shamelessness  with  which  it  adapts  itself 
to  the  drivel  of  ordinary  conversation. 
In  the  Dreiser  books — especially  in  the 
later  ones,  where  in  my  humble  opinion 
he  is  feeling  more  firmly  after  his  true 
way, — people  are  permitted  to  say  those 

20 


THE  WRITER  AND  HIS  WRITINGS 

things  which  they  actually  do  say  in  real 
life — things  that  make  you  blush  and 
howl,  so  soaked  in  banality  and  inepti 
tude  are  they.  In  the  true  epic  manner 
Dreiser  gravely  puts  down  all  these  fatu 
ous  observations,  until  you  feel  inclined 
to  cry  aloud  for  the  maddest,  the  most 
fantastic,  the  most  affected  Osconian  wit, 
to  serve  as  an  antidote. 

But  one  knows  very  well  he  is  right. 
People  don't  in  ordinary  life — certainly 
not  in  ordinary  democratic  life — talk 
like  Oscar  Wilde,  or  utter  deep  ironic 
sayings  in  the  style  of  Matthew  Arnold. 
They  don't  really — let  this  be  well  under 
stood — concentrate  their  feelings  in  bitter 
pungent  spasmodic  outbursts,  as  those 
Rabelaisean  persons  in  Guy  de  Mau 
passant.  They  just  gabble  and  gibber 
and  drivel;  at  least  that  is  what  they  do 
in  England  and  America. 

And  the  same  thing  applies  to  Drei 
ser's  attitude  towards  "good  and  evil" 
and  towards  the  problem  of  the  "super 
natural."  All  other  modern  writers 
array  themselves  on  this  side  or  that. 
They  either  defend  traditional  morality 

21 


THE  WRITER  AND  HIS  WRITINGS 

or  they  attack  it.  They  are  anxious,  at 
all  costs,  to  give  their  work  dramatic 
intensity;  they  struggle  to  make  it  iron 
ical,  symbolical,  mystical — God  knows 
what!  But  Dreiser  neither  attacks  mor 
ality  nor  defends  immorality.  In  the 
true  Epic  manner  he  puts  himself  aside, 
and  permits  the  great  mad  Hurly-Burly 
to  rush  pell-mell  past  him  and  write  its 
own  whirligig  runes  at  its  own  careless 
pleasure.  Even  Zola  himself  was  not 
such  a  realist.  Zola  had  a  purpose; — 
the  purpose  of  showing  what  a  Beast 
the  human  animal  is!  Dreiser's  people 
are  not  beasts;  and  they  shock  our  es 
thetic  sensibilities  quite  as  often  by  their 
human  sentiment  as  they  do  by  their 
lapses  into  lechery. 

Dreiser  has  no  prejudices  except  the 
prejudice  of  finding  the  normal  man  and 
the  normal  woman,  shuffled  to  and  fro 
by  the  normal  forces  of  life,  an  interest 
ing  and  arresting  spectacle.  To  some 
among  us  such  a  spectacle  is  not  inter 
esting.  We  must  have  the  excitement  of 
the  unusual,  the  shock  of  the  abnormal. 
Well!  There  are  plenty  of  European 

22 


THE  WRITER  AND  HIS  WRITINGS 

writers  ready  to  gratify  this  taste.  Dreis 
er  is  not  a  European  writer.  He  is  an 
American  writer.  The  life  that  inter 
ests  him,  and  interests  him  passionately, 
is  the  life  of  America.  It  remains  to 
be  seen  whether  the  life  of  America  in 
terests  Americans! 


23 


BOOKS     BY     THEODORE    DREISER 

A    HOOSIER    HOLIDAY 

With  32  Full-page  Illustrations,  Cover 
Design  and  End-papers  by  Franklin  Booth 

Net,  $3.00 

"The  panorama  that  he  enrolls 
runs  the  whole  scale  of  the  colors; 
it  is  a  series  of  extraordinary  vivid 
pictures.  The  sombre  gloom  of  the 
Pennsylvania  hills,  with  Wilkes- 
Barre  lying  among  them  like  a  gem; 
the  procession  of  little  country  towns, 
sleepy  and  a  bit  hoggish ;  the  flash 
of  Buffalo,  Cleveland,  Indianapolis; 
the  gargantum  coal-pockets  and  ore- 
docks  along  the  Erie  shore ;  the 
tinsel  summer  resorts ;  the  lush  In 
diana  farm-lands,  with  their  stodgy, 
bovine  people — all  of  these  things  are 
sketched  in  simply  and  yet  almost 
magnificently.  I  know,  indeed,  of  no 
book  which  better  describes  the  Am 
erican  hinterland.  .  .  . 

"Save  for  passages  in  'The  Titan/ 
'A  Hoosier  Holiday'  marks  the  high 
est  tide  of  Dreiser's  writings — that  is, 
as  sheer  writing.  .  .  .In  sum,  this 
record  of  a  chance  holiday  is  much 
more  than  a  mere  travel  book,  for 
it  offers,  and  for  the  first  time,  a 
clear  understanding  of  the  funda 
mental  faiths  and  ideas,  and  of  the 
intellectual  and  spiritual  background 
no  less,  of  a  man  with  whom  the 
future  historian  of  American  litera 
ture  will  have  to  deal  at  no  little 
length.  Dreiser,  as  yet,  has  not  come 
into  his  own."— H.  L.  MENCKEN  in 
"The  Smart  Set." 


JOHN  LANE  COMPANY 

Publishers 

New  York 

24 


BOOKS     BY     THEODORE    DREISER 

THE    "GENIUS" 

The  Story  of  the  Soul's  Struggle 
Seen  Through  the  Eyes  of  Genius 

Net,  $1.50 

"Mr.  Dreiser  proves  himself  once 
more  a  master  realist  .  .  .  he  is 
a  great,  a  very  great  artist.  In  a 
season  remarkable  for  its  excellent 
fiction  this  new  book  of  his  imme 
diately  takes  its  place  in  the  front 
rank." — New  York  Tribune. 

"If  America  can  boast  of  a  novelist 
now  living  of  greater  power,  insight, 
imaginative  sweep,  let  him  step  for 
ward  and  claim  the  laurel  wreath. 
Dreiser  seems  to  me  our  greatest  nov 
elist  now  writing,  and  destined  in  the 
wise  judgment  of  posterity  to  be 
given  a  place  among  the  noteworthy 
writers  of  this  age." — EDGAR  LEE 
MASTERS,  author  of  "The  Spoon 
River  Anthology,"  in  the  Chicago 
Evening  Post. 


JOHN  LANE  COMPANY 

Publishers 

New  York 

25 


BOOKS    BY     THEODORE    DREISER 

SEVEN    PLAYS 

OF   THE    NATURAL   AND   THE    SUPER 
NATURAL. 

Net,  $1.25 

THE  GIRL  IN  THE  COFFIN. 

THE  BLUE  SPHERE. 

LAUGHING  GAS. 

IN  THE  DARK 

THE  SPRING  RECITAL. 

THE  LIGHT  IN  THE  WINDOW. 

OLD  RAGPICKER. 

"There  probably  is  nothing  in  the 
American  Drama  quite  like  these 
plays,  so  realistic,  so  true  to  nature, 
and  yet  so  suggestive  of  those  spiri 
tual  undercurrents  that  are  the  real 
factors  in  the  problem  of  existence." 
— St.  Louis  Globe  Democrat. 

"Opens  up  a  new  vista  in  American 
play-writing.  Mr.  Dreiser's  previous 
work  has  shown  him  to  be  a  signi 
ficant  figure  in  contemporary  Amer 
ican  literature,  and  these  plays  serve 
to  emphasize  the  importance  of  that 
fact." — Boston  Transcript. 


JOHN  LANE  COMPANY 

Publishers 

New  York 


BOOKS     BY     THEODORE    DREISER 
SISTER    CARRIE 

Net,  $1.35 

"  'Sister  Carrie'  remains  one  of  the 
most  powerful  productions  of  uncom 
promising  realism  in  American  liter 
ature." — New  York  Tribune. 

"The  book  is,  firstly,  the  full,  ex 
haustive  story  of  the  'half-equipped 
little  knight's'  life  and  adventures; 
secondly,  it  is  a  broad,  vivid  picture 
of  men  and  manners  in  middle  class 
New  York  and  Chicago,  and  thirdly, 
it  is  a  thorough  and  really  masterly 
study  of  the  moral,  physical  and 
social  deterioration  of  one  Hurst- 
wood,  a  lover  of  the  heroine.  Upon 
all  these  counts  it  is  a  creditable 
piece  of  work,  faithful  and  rich  in 
the  interest  which  pertained  to  real 
istic  fiction.  It  is  further  of  interest 
by  reason  that  it  strikes  a  key-note 
and  is  typical  in  the  wealth  and  diver 
sity  of  its  matter  of  the  great  country 
which  gave  it  birth.  Readers  there 
are  who,  having  perused  the  five  hun 
dred  and  odd  pages  which  go  to  the 
making  of  'Sister  Carrie'  will  find  a 
permanent  place  upon  their  shelves 
for  the  book  beside  M.  Zola's 
'Nana.'  " — THEODORE  WATTS  DUNTON 
in  the  London  Athenaum. 


JOHN  LANE  COMPANY 

Publishers 

New  York 

27 


BOOKS     BY     THEODORE    DREISER 
THE    FINANCIER 

Net,  $1.40 

"If  The  Financier'  were  not  des 
ignated  on  its  title  page  as  'a  novel/ 
or  if  Mr.  Dreiser  were  without  repu 
tation  as  a  novelist,  the  reader  might 
easily  imagine  himself  to  be  looking 
at  an  historical  panorama  of  social, 
business  and  political  life  in  Phila 
delphia  during  a  period  of  the  twenty 
years  just  previous  to,  during  and  fol 
lowing  the  Civil  War.  Mr.  Dreiser 
does  not  lack  imagination,  in  fact  he 
discloses  its  vigor  on  almost  every 
page,  yet  the  photographic  exactitude 
with  which  he  pictures  the  successive 
stages  of  Frank  Cowperwood's  prog 
ress  in  finance  and  love  is  little  short 
of  marvellous.  His  story  seems  to  be 
literally  the  biography  of  his  hero, 
of  a  man  who  actually  lived  and 
triumphed,  sinned  and  suffered  amid 
the  turmoil  of  existence  in  a  great 
American  city."  —  Boston  Evening 
Transcript. 


HARPER    &   BROTHERS 

Publishers 

New  York 


28 


BOOKS    BY     THEODORE    DREISER 
THE    TITAN 

Net,  $1.40 

"In  the  genre  there  has  been  no 
book  published  that  approaches  'The 
Titan'  in  human  interest  since  Mr. 
White's  'A  Certain  Rich  Man'  ap 
peared  and  carried  away  the  public." 
— Philadelphia  Public  Ledger. 

"It  is  a  stupendous  picture,  built  up 
ponderously,  detail  upon  detail,  in 
the  Zolaesque  manner,  of  the  period 
in  which  gigantic  fortunes  were 
created  out  of  public  utilities,  out  of 
gas  and  street  railways,  and  the  for 
mation  of  the  first  trusts;  the  period 
of  the  wholesale  corruption  of  city 
councils  and  state  legislatures,  of 
bought  and  stolen  franchises  and 
elections,  of  the  control  of  politics 
by  big  business.  The  struggles  for 
control,  for  the  spoils,  the  hidden  and 
open  fights,  the  personal  quarrels 
that  are  transferred  to  the  financial 
arena,  all  this  is  vivid  reading.  .  .  . 
In  conclusion  it  may  be  said  that 
this  picture  of  an  era  in  our  financial 
and  industrial  evolution  has  serious 
socio-historical  value." — New  York 
Tribune. 


JOHN  LANE  COMPANY 

Publishers 

New  York 

29 


BOOKS    BY     THEODORE    DREISER 
JENNIE    GERHARDT 

Net,  $1.35 

"  'Jennie  Gerhardt'  is  a  story 
wrung  from  the  heart  strings  and 
dripping  with  vitality.  ...  It  has 
the  inexorable  simplicity  and  reality 
of  which  only  the  French  seem  to  be 
capable.  .  .  .  Jennie  is  the  victim  of 
a  relentless  destiny.  She  is  born 
for  sacrifice.  The  braver  her  fight 
against  the  ironic  whim  of  circum 
stance  the  quicker  her  vanquishment. 
Naturally  virtuous,  tender  and  pure 
minded,  she  is  pursued  by  this  mali 
cious  fate,  but  even  with  a  nameless 
child  she  remains  pure.  Can  such  a 
paradox  be  understood  in  1911?  It 
is  not  necessary  to  go  into  the  plot. 
In  fact,  there  is  none  to  speak  of. 
It  is  life — big,  inscrutable,  crushing. 
It  is  the  life  with  which  we  are  in 
collision  every  day,  if  we  but  knew 
it.  There  will  be  various  opinions 
about  this  book.  One  that  may  or 
may  not  be  of  value  is  that  it  comes 
near  deserving  that  abused  word 
'great.'" — New  York  Herald. 


HARPER    &   BROTHERS 

Publishers 

New  York 


30 


BOOKS    BY     THEODORE    DREISER 

A   TRAVELER   AT    FORTY 

Illustrations  by  Glackens 

Net,  $1.80 

"In  'A  Traveler  at  Forty'  Theodore 
Dreiser  has  done  something  unique  in 
travel  books.  It  is  unlike  anything 
else  of  its  kind,  because  nobody  else 
ever  wrote  exactly  like  Mr.  Dreiser. 
If  anyone  had  Dreiser  doubtless 
would  have  written  in  still  another 
fashion.  The  very  title  is  a  reflec 
tion  of  the  book's  peculiar  excellence. 
The  author  has  avoided  the  ordinary 
error  of  egotism  by  being  thoroughly 
egotistical.  The  volume  doesn't  pre 
tend  to  tell  about  the  conventional 
'grand  tour'  of  England  and  the  con 
tinent;  it  leaves  that  to  the  guide 
books  and  to  authors  who  know  no 
better. 

"It  is  a  book  about  a  more  or  less 
candid  Theodore  Dreiser  and  what 
he  thinks  about  what  happened  to 
him  in  England,  France,  Germany, 
Italy  and  Holland  and  some  other 
localities  which  he  saw  for  the  first 
time  just  as  he  had  turned  40. 

"We  are  indebted  to  Mr.  Dreiser 
not  only  for  a  great  book,  but  for 
an  example  which  must  be  followed 
by  lesser  writers  who  essay  to  pro 
duce  volumes  of  their  impressions 
of  lands  and  peoples  not  their  own." 
— Kansas  City  Star. 


THE    CENTURY    COMPANY 

Publishers 
New  York 

31 


BOOKS    BY     THEODORE    DREISER 

In  Preparation 

To  be  Published  in  the  Spring,   1917 

THE    BULWARK 

Net,  $1.50 

Of  all  modern  novelists  Theodore 
Dreiser  most  entirely  catches  the 
spirit  of  America.  There  is  some 
thing  epic,  something  enormous  and 
amorphous— like  the  body  of  an  ele 
mental  giant — about  each  of  his 
books.  In  "The  Bulwark"  especially 
the  peculiar  power  of  Dreiser's  mas 
sive  coulter-like  impetus  is  evident. 
The  subject  is  distinctly  American — 
the  struggle  of  the  head  of  a  Quaker- 
family  to  bring  up  his  children  in 
the  orthodox  way,  and  the  influence 
of  modern  society  upon  their  beliefs 
and  actions. 


JOHN  LANE  COMPANY 

Publishers 

New  York 


32 


NlA    -* 


U.C.  BERKELEY  LIBRARIES 


CD311DflflDM 


14  DAY  USE 

I  RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

RENEWALS  ONLY— TEL.  NO.  642-3405 
This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 

on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 
Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 


Due  end  of 

subject  to  recall  af4r  -         AUG  - 


•DID 


BEC'DLO   JAN  2 


6 


LD21A-60m-3,'70 
(N5382slO)476-A-32 


General  Library 

University  of  California 

Berkeley 


